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Your Pet's Mean Corpuscular Hemoglobin Concentration

MCHC

Your pet’s
Mean Corpuscular Hemoglobin Concentration (MCHC) is the average hemoglobin
concentration in each of its red blood cells. It is your pet’s hemoglobin
concentration value x100 divided by its hematocrit (Hct=PCV)
value.

Reasons
Why Your Pet’s MCHC Might Be Low (Hypochromic
Anemia) :

Low MCHC can
happen after your pet has lost sizable amounts of blood when its body
is forced to replace large numbers of lost red blood cells and still has
the capacity to do so (a regenerative anemia).
Those RBCs are often immature (reticulocytes)
and somewhat larger than normal and they may not contain normal amounts
of hemoglobin which is what accounts for the low MCHC.

Low MCHC
can also occur when your pet has insufficient iron stores (iron
deficiency microcitic anemia). In puppies and kittens, severe
hookworm or flea infections can be responsible for that. Older strays
that must subsist on whatever food they can scavenge have the same risk.

Low MCHC can
also occur during chronic inflammatory diseases and infections of many
kinds as well as some cancers.

Chronic intestinal
problems that affect the pet's ability to absorb nutrients, liver problems,
and abnormal blood circulation (portosystemic shunts)
can also limit the amount of iron that the pet absorbs and lower its MCHC
and MCV.

Some of the
older automated laboratory analysis systems will give falsely low MCHC
readings when the blood in samples are clumped, partially clotted or agglutinated.
Extended storage can also decreases MCHC readings.

Reasons Why Your Pet’s MCHC Might Be High :

This is usually
due to inadvertently drawing or submitting a hemolized
blood sample. Lipemic blood can also falsely raise
your pet’s hemoglobin readings, leading to an artifact (not
real, inaccurate) MCHC high reading as well. I know of no
real causes.